


New Year's Eve on the Battlefield

by RosalindInPants



Category: The Great Library Series - Rachel Caine
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, New Year's Eve, New Year's Kiss, Pre-Canon, war zone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:34:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28365480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosalindInPants/pseuds/RosalindInPants
Summary: Wolfe didn't plan to spend his first New Year's Eve with Santi in a war zone. But few things ever go according to plan. Having completed the evacuation of the Cardiff Serapeum, Wolfe and Santi find time alone together. The night is gloomy, the war is worse than Wolfe could have imagined, but they have each other.
Relationships: Niccolo Santi/Christopher Wolfe
Kudos: 6





	New Year's Eve on the Battlefield

**Author's Note:**

> For purposes of this fic, I am saying that the events of "Stormcrow" happened early in the year, around January/February. Wolfe and Santi have been together for not quite a year, and this is Wolfe's first war zone.
> 
> Ink and Bone says the war between England and Wales has been going on for more than fifty years, so extrapolating from that, it seems reasonable enough for them to be fighting over Cardiff here.

The sky didn’t change much with sunset. There was a perceptible darkening of the heavy gray clouds that hung over the camp, and the campfires that spotted the hillside grew brighter by contrast, but there was no burst of color, no ray of light that might signify the death throes of the final day of the year. Only the creeping, deepening shadow of night that marched across the fields, inevitable as the progress of the Welsh army.

England would be wise to yield here, Wolfe thought as he looked out toward the dark walls of the city. Historically speaking, Cardiff was Welsh territory, taken and occupied by England in a bloody battle mere decades ago, and Wales badly wanted it back. The Welsh forces might have granted a holiday truce, but their troops were restless and their general’s concessions to holiday charity had been as much a matter of practicality as kindness. The Library needed time to clear the Cardiff Serapeum.

That grim task was now done. Come the new year, Wales would give no quarter. They would have their city or burn it to the ground, and Wolfe would stay here in his camp, protected by a century of High Garda, and verify that the carnage was conducted in keeping with the accords. So long as no books came to harm, he could stand in a field of ash and blood and pronounce the Great Library’s satisfaction.

Wolfe wanted a drink. Badly. There was wine in the command tent, where the Cardiff Serapeum staff had gathered, but that was the last place he wanted to be. Courtesy required that he offer them his hospitality. It didn’t require that he linger, casting his Stormcrow’s shadow over a celebration already subdued by circumstance. Nor would he trouble the troops gathered with their squads around the fires. Their festivities were quieter still, in sharp contrast with the raucous sounds that drifted over from the Welsh camp. Games of cards and dice, murmurs of conversation and the passing of bottles, all tinged with the intimacy of friendships forged under fire.

There was only one man Wolfe felt such intimacy toward. There, crouched at one of the campfires, his face cast in green by flames supplemented with Greek fire to drive back the damp. Not easy to make out his features through the dark and the mist and the icy spit of rain, but Wolfe knew him by his bearing. Niccolo Santi stood out among his troops. It wasn’t only the subtle differences in the gold emblems of his uniform that marked him as a lieutenant, though Wolfe had studied those as well as any palimpsest. It was the strong line of his shoulders, the easy grace of his movement, the quiet intensity of his presence.

Nic passed a bottle full of dark wine to one of the soldiers, and for a pained fraction of a moment, Wolfe did want to be there in that circle of hunched backs, with his face warmed by the fire and his shoulder resting ever so casually against Nic’s. Foolish fancy. A Scholar did not mingle with common soldiers, not on the battlefield. They would give their lives for him without hesitation. That didn’t make them friends.

The bottle went around once before Nic stood, unfurling like one of the black and gold Library banners that surrounded the camp. Looking down at the soldiers by the fire, Nic spoke. Too quiet for Wolfe to hear, though he did hear the answering echo of laughter. Nic's chin came up, and somehow, in the mist and the shadows, his gaze found Wolfe. Their eyes locked. No, surely that was wishful thinking, Nic couldn't really see…

But Nic was coming toward him, path straight and stride purposeful. Nic could, Wolfe thought, have been making for the transports behind him, coming to check that the books were still secure within. But no, he could see Nic's eyes now, brown in the night, and the look they held was not one for books.

That look did more to drive the chill from Wolfe's body than all the layered clothing beneath his Scholar's robe. Almost a year now they’d been lovers, and Nic’s approach still felt like a ship carried home on high tide. Wolfe was beginning to think it would always feel this way.

“You lasted longer than expected in there,” Nic said, drawing near. Quiet enough that his voice wouldn’t carry on the still night air.

Wolfe shrugged. “I may have taken the long way around. Toured the camp.”

“You’ll be thirsty, then.” There was an empty-looking pack on Nic’s back, but when he shrugged it off and reached in, his hand emerged clutching another full bottle of ruby liquid. “Port from the officers’ supply, if you’d like.”

“Please,” Wolfe said, taking the bottle.

Sweet and heavy, the port went down smooth. There were, Wolfe suspected, subtleties of flavor that he missed by drinking it straight from the bottle. He didn’t care. The thick, sticky warmth of it was what he needed. He took another deep drink and passed the bottle back to Nic without comment.

For a while, they drank in silence. Nic stood at Wolfe’s side, inching slowly closer until their arms touched. Shoulder to shoulder, just as he’d imagined. Even with shirts and coats, armor and robe between them, he could feel the heat of Nic’s skin as acutely as if they lay bare beneath the sheets.

Past the line of Library banners, a cheer rose from the Welsh camp, and Wolfe caught sight of a glowing, bobbing streak of white between the tents. A Mari Lwyd, one of several that had been making the rounds of the Welsh camp over the past few days. Upon his arrival from Alexandria to negotiate passage to the Cardiff Serapeum, Wolfe had found the beribboned horse skulls and tipsy rhymes hearteningly festive, a sign that things were not so bad as the Archivist feared. In retrospect, that hope was just the latest of his illusions to be shattered.

Beyond, the walls of Cardiff loomed black against the deep gray of the clouds. Not even a watchfire there. What little fuel remained in the city was being used for warmth, and from what Wolfe had seen, there was nowhere near enough even for that.

Shivering, Wolfe took another drink.

Nic slipped an arm around him, and Wolfe leaned into it, the momentary prickle of unease at public impropriety overcome by longing. Nic was warm and solid and steady, and he needed that now more than ever. The night was dark, the shadows heavy. No one would see them here.

The icy drizzle turned to snow, a light flurry of tiny flakes that melted in the mingled cloud of their breath and clung only for a moment to the ground before dissolving into the mud. Wolfe watched the flakes fall, idly pondering their unique crystalline geometry. Purely in theory; he couldn’t pick out such fine detail without his glasses.

“Not how we planned to greet the new year,” Nic said softly. Not quite probing, but opening the door to more serious talk in a way that left open the possibility of retreat.

Like many things about Nic, Wolfe was coming to appreciate that. Forestalling the impulse to deflect with complaints about plans cancelled by the urgent mission, Wolfe took a long drink. With the heat of alcohol on his tongue, he said, “It shouldn’t be like this.”

“True. But it is.”

They’d had this conversation before. In Moscow. A few times since. It always ended in the same place. The world wasn’t what it should have been. Neither of them had the power to change it. Not yet. 

Wolfe raised the bottle, drank, and passed it to Nic. _“Mozhet eto izmenit.”_ The toast they’d been repeating since that night in Moscow. _May it change._

Nic echoed the Russian words and drank.

“What do they even want from this, either of them?” Wolfe glared out past the Library banners at the camp and the city, as if those within might somehow feel his rancor. “By the time they’re through, the victor will rule nothing but ruins and bones, and for what? To win what amounts to a colossal pissing contest?”

They weren’t really questions, any of them, and Wolfe had no real need of answers. He knew them all already, on paper at least. In numbers and theories, he knew the strategic value of the city and the tactical gambles each side made. He could see how the equations worked out. What he couldn’t do was reconcile any of it with the smell of rot or the sight of starving children’s hollow eyes.

Somehow, Nic understood. Silent, he passed the bottle, and Wolfe drank. The port seemed to coat his insides, ointment over a raw wound.

“The first one is the hardest. It doesn’t get easier, exactly, but you learn to bear it.” Though Nic’s voice was calm, Wolfe heard the weight of sorrow behind it and found his eye drawn to the row of gleaming gold awards that decorated Nic’s uniform coat, each given for valor in battle. Not all were the kind of battle story told with an eager grin over drinks. A soldier didn’t make lieutenant at Nic’s age on talent alone.

“I’d rather put an end to it. All our knowledge, all our power, and this is the best we can do?”

Nic chuckled. Not mocking, but knowing. “When you sit on the Archivist’s throne, my dear Stormcrow, I will gladly drag the squabbling monarchs of the world before you so you can lecture them into laying down their arms. Until then, we do what we can.”

“Even if it isn’t enough,” Wolfe finished for him. He let out a sigh. “I know, I can’t save the world.”

“We protected our own. That matters. But there’s also no shame in grieving what you couldn’t save.”

Coming from anyone else, Wolfe might have dismissed that as trite sentiment, but Nic had a way of cutting past his defenses and making him listen. Grief was, he supposed, as apt a term as any to describe the tangled mess of unease where pride in a job well done should have been. He’d saved the books and the librarians, and he was glad of it. That didn’t make him feel any better about the cost.

Not much left in the bottle, but Wolfe lifted it toward the city walls all the same. A funeral toast, as much memorial as the city was likely to get. “To Cardiff, then. Poor bastards.” In his mind’s eye, he saw the city fall. Age-old buildings turned to dust, bodies burned to ash. A city reduced to its stories, books carried away in armored transports, mirrored journals shelved in the Great Archives. 

He drank and passed the bottle with a scant mouthful remaining for Nic to finish. Nic took it without complaint and repeated the toast. Ever mindful of the cleanliness of his camp, Nic returned the empty bottle to his pack, and for a fleeting instant, Wolfe hoped there might be another. But there was nothing.

As the port settled in Wolfe’s stomach, a thousand thoughts pushed at his brain, none of them adequately formed to give voice to. He didn’t try. Nor did Nic break the silence, though his arm tightened around Wolfe, pulling him closer. Their thighs pressed together now. Their boots touched. Wolfe welcomed the warmth. Without the port to heat his blood, cold was setting in.

Toes going numb, Wolfe was about to suggest a walk back to the tents when the first bell rang out. It came from behind, in his own camp, a sharp tone most often used to call the soldiers to meals, now chiming more slowly. One… two… on the third, more joined it. A small chorus of bells from the Welsh camp, and a deep, distant ringing of church bells from Cardiff.

Midnight. Like invisible, intangible books, one year closed, and another opened.

The twelfth note rang out, and Nic’s hands were on Wolfe’s shoulders, turning him so that they stood face to face. Very close. Before Wolfe could even react to that sudden development, Nic had a thumb hooked in Wolfe’s scarf, tugging it down from his face, and Nic was leaning in. There was no time to think about anything but the steady hand that cupped his cheek and the intoxicating fragrance of wine-sweet breath.

Nic’s lips met his, soft as the falling snow, but so very much warmer. So warm that his mouth opened readily, seeking heat that flowed into him in a tickling, teasing wave. All inhibition forgotten, he threw his arms around Nic and kissed back with a need so strong it half took his breath away.

Though kissing Niccolo Santi had become a regular pastime of Wolfe’s as of late, he had yet to find any two of those kisses precisely the same. Like the drifting snowflakes, each had its own unique geometry that he would gladly have spent a lifetime studying. This one was like sunlight through stormclouds, like the thaw of a long-awaited spring. Like the filthy heaps of gray-streaked snow from Cardiff’s alleys - from the dark corners of Wolfe’s heart - melting to clean, clear water.

He’d needed that. Badly. A reminder that whatever might happen in Cardiff, there were things to look forward to in this new year.

With Nic’s teeth grazing the hollow of his throat, Wolfe murmured, “Now _this_ is a promising beginning to the year.”

“I can promise you much more if we go back to our tent.” Nic’s voice rumbled against Wolfe’s skin.

Their tent. To be more precise, Wolfe’s, but Nic had made a very compelling argument that he could better protect Wolfe if they shared sleeping quarters. That such an arrangement facilitated other, more recreational, activities was incidental.

“I would like that very much,” Wolfe said, mind racing with possibilities. There were a great many promises Nic could make, and keep, in that tent. All of them enticing.

Nic tucked Wolfe’s scarf back into place before stepping back and offering his arm. Behind him, campfires flared with newly added Greek fire, and the darkness of walls and clouds loomed, but there was a smile on his face and a dusting of snowflakes on his black uniform coat. He was beautiful, and he was Wolfe’s, and that was enough to drive back the gloom.

A slow smile spreading across his face, Wolfe took his lover’s arm and allowed himself to be guided back toward the tents.


End file.
